Disney's Move to Pull 'Kimmel' Sparks First Amendment Debate

US presidents have long had adversarial relationships with the media — but no American head of state has taken that battle to the extremes that Donald Trump has. By using, or threatening to use, the courts and his administration’s authority, Trump has forced a series of major concessions from the world’s largest outlets.

Walt Disney Co. stunned the industry Wednesday when ABC put Jimmy Kimmel’s show on indefinite hiatus, after a Sept. 15 monologue in which the popular comedian riffed on how Trump and his supporters reacted to the assassination of Republican activist Charlie Kirk. The segment had drawn a public rebuke earlier from Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Disney’s move, on the heels of attacks from the White House on some of the biggest figures and companies in broadcasting and entertainment, shows Trump’s increasingly getting his way. In the process, he’s making media companies in the home of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine look like state-run outlets, according to interviews with media executives and academics.

Katie Fallow, Deputy Litigation Director for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, joins Bloomberg Businessweek Daily to discuss.

On Thursday, Trump said US broadcast networks should face scrutiny over their licenses if they’re too critical of him, in what amounts to his furthest-reaching threat to media freedoms.

Media, academic institutions and American companies “are all bending to the will” of Trump’s administration, said Juan Manuel Benítez, a professor at Columbia University’s journalism school. “I don’t think it’s about being left, right or center. These are business decisions.”

For ABC, it wasn’t the network’s first run-in with the administration. In December, the network paid Trump $15 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that ABC News host George Stephanopoulos had defamed him.

Asked about ABC’s decision at a public event with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said: “Jimmy Kimmel is not a talented person. He had very bad ratings, and they should have fired him a long time ago. So, you know, you can call that free speech or not. He was fired for lack of talent.”

Kimmel was just the latest industry personality to have run afoul of the administration.

Paramount Global, while trying to get its merger with Skydance Media approved by the FCC, paid $16 million in July to settle a lawsuit by Trump that claimed CBS News had edited an interview to favor his opponent Kamala Harris. The network then announced plans to end the late-night program of Stephen Colbert, a frequent Trump critic. Days later, the FCC approved the Skydance deal.

‘A Guillotine’

“I was always an advocate for settling the case because I felt it was really a distraction,” Shari Redstone, Paramount’s former chair, said at an Axios media conference Thursday.

Barry Diller, a longtime media and entertainment executive, told Bloomberg News he felt sorry for Redstone, who had “a guillotine” at her throat while trying to get her merger approved under pressure from the president.

The government holds sway over media outlets in many ways. The FCC could pull a TV station’s license to operate, although historically such instances have been rare and not often tied to content decisions.

In July, the Republican-controlled Congress stopped funding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, squeezing public TV and radio stations that distribute programming from NPR and PBS.

During an appearance on a conservative podcast on Wednesday, FCC Chairman Carr criticized Kimmel and threatened to take action against ABC’s parent company.

“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

Shortly after, Nexstar Media Group Inc., a large owner of ABC stations, said it was pulling Kimmel’s program.

What made the decision noteworthy is that Nexstar has business before the FCC and needs the agency’s approval to complete a $6.2 billion takeover of a competing broadcaster called Tegna Inc.

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